Cynthia Rich is an activist who
has been exposing ageism against old women for more than 25
years. She co-authored the trailblazing essay collection Look
Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging, and Ageism
with her partner Barbara Macdonald in 1983; a second, expanded
edition was issued in 1991. Another expansion of that edition
was published in 2001 after Macdonald’s death at age
86, so that the essays span more than twenty years of analysis
and activism, addressing society’s pervasive ageism
from a feminist perspective. Rich lives in San Diego, where
she is a co-founder of The Old Women’s Project. According
to the project website, the group “works to make visible
how old women are directly affected by all issues of social
justice, and to combat the ageist attitudes that ignore, trivialize
or demean us. We are a group of old women who use actions
of various kinds to achieve this goal. We welcome women of
all ages who wish to join in our actions” (The Old Women’s
Project, 2005). During a telephone conversation, Rich commented
on relationships between Women’s Studies, ageism against
old women, and activism. Whenever possible, the interviewer’s
(VBL)
comments were omitted in order to focus on Rich’s (CR)
views.

VBL:
Some of the comments on ageism on The Old Women’s Project
website are similar to those included in essays and speeches
you and Barbara Macdonald wrote twenty years ago. Have perceptions
of old age changed in society at large? Is the battle any
different now, as the general population ages?

CR:
That’s an excellent place to start. We’re living
out the world that Barbara projected for us in 1980 in her
essay “Exploitation by Compassion” (Macdonald
1983). There are so many more old women now, and the corporations,
the drug companies, the nursing facilities, the retirement
homes have moved right in to reap the profits. But it also
turns out that they can make money by actively promoting a
fear and loathing around women’s aging. Now 30-year-olds
are just horrified by their first wrinkle, and it’s
become a major industry to make younger women see my 72-yearold
body as hideous. Will it matter that the baby boomers are
aging? Well, there may be more of us old women every day,
but if numbers translated into power, women and people of
color would rule the world. I don’t put faith in numbers

VBL:
What direction do you believe academics should take, especially
women’s studies and age studies scholars?

CR:
I want to say that any change in approach, in attitudes,
needs to start in academia; we need a theoretical base. The
women who set off the women’s movement in the ’70s
and ’80s will be moving into old age in large numbers—they
could make a difference—but there’s no theoretical
analysis, no base for what they’re encountering. Without
a theoretical foundation that Women’s Studies can provide
us, women have no idea how to think about our aging and our
organizing. They’re struggling. Longtime feminists such
as Ellen Goodman, Geraldine Ferraro, and Pat Schroeder tried
to organize a voters’ movement called Granny Voters,
around their concern for their grandchildren. Granny Voters?
These are strong feminists who never would have called themselves
Mommy Voters, who never would have ignored the sexism they
encountered or fed the stereotype that all women are mothers.

VBL:
The Granny Voters say that they emphasize grandchildren
to make politicians aware that older voters are interested
in more than Medicare and Social Security. Here’s an
excerpt from their website:

We started GrannyVoter.org
to affect the quality of political discourse in this country
and insist that candidates discuss the long-term implications
of their policies. Through GrannyVoter.org, we want to
get the word out to other grandparents so that they can
act, speak, and vote on behalf of their grandchildren’s
future. On our grandchildren’s behalf, GrannyVoters
will ask the candidates what they will do to improve the
world that we are leaving to our grandchildren. (2004)

CR:
They want to act, and they want to act as old women,
but they have no theoretical base. I’m counting on academia,
particularly Women’s Studies, to provide them with one.

VBL:
One theory of aging that many scholars have found useful
is Kathleen Woodward’s (Aging
and Its Discontents 1991) mirror stage of old age,
a variation on Jacques Lacan’s (Ecrits
1966) mirror stage of infancy. The old person sees
herself in the mirror and, instead of seeing an integrated
self reflected, feels an alienation from the image of this
aged body. Old people say they don’t feel any different
from when they were young adults, but they cannot believe
that their bodies are so different from how they feel. They
experience distancing from their bodies and a sense that their
bodies are betraying them.

CR:
That alienation from the body comes from the fact not
only that we weren’t always old, but also that we were
ageist when we were young. We shared society’s revulsion
of aging flesh. We internalized the ageism. Our bodies are
changing all our lives. We should always be standing in front
of the mirror, saying, “I can’t believe this is
my body.” At age 20, we should be in disbelief that
it’s the same body we had at age 5. It’s so marked
when we’re old because we’ve internalized that
physical revulsion that’s not dissimilar to the physical
revulsion that other marginalized people have experienced—people
of color, the disabled, lesbians and gays, Jews. All marginalized
people have heard at one time or another that it’s “natural”
for others to find them physically repulsive. That’s
key. There’s a mechanism that connects all types of
marginalization with a contempt for the physical body. Ageism
is not different from other “isms”; we put it
into the category of natural—naturally, younger people
don’t want to associate with old women. Not long ago,
people thought it was natural for men not to want to associate
with women outside of the home, or for white people not to
associate with people of color. Of course, men will sometimes
want to associate just with men, African Americans with African
Americans, gays with gays, old women with old women. The question
is, how pervasive is the segregation? And who holds the key?

VBL:
It’s essential to recognize that ageism is in
the same category as racism and sexism, but it differs in
that during the life course, we all move from the unmarked
to the marked position, from privilege to discrimination.
That has a great deal to do with our resistance toward acknowledging
ageism, including the resistance of scholars to address the
issue. It seems that you’ve been delivering this same
message on ageism for many years to the academic community,
and too many of us still don’t get it.

CR:
Well, I’m not in academia, and I’m only
invited to speak there very occasionally, but in 2002 at NWSA
in Las Vegas, I was supposed to give a reading from the new
edition of Look Me in the Eye.
I picked up the conference schedule of presentations, and
I was so appalled by the invisibility of old women that I
had to give a talk instead of a reading. It was almost twenty
years after Barbara’s 1985 presentation to NWSA about
ageism in Women’s Studies, which created a huge amount
of attention at the time. Her talk was entitled “Outside
the Sisterhood,” and I can tell you that nearly twenty
years later, old women were still outside the sisterhood in
Las Vegas. That was evident also when I looked over the women’s
studies texts and anthologies. So I’m delighted that
this issue of the Journal is being devoted to ageism, and
I appreciate the invitation to contribute.

VBL:
As the baby boom ages, perhaps as larger numbers of
those active in Women’s Studies face ageism themselves,
they will develop an interest and understanding.

CR:
Women’s Studies is most able to see that this
is not just a “problem of the elderly”; we need
to clearly see the world of difference between how old men
and old women are treated—beyond the issue of their
pocketbooks, which is huge. Old men who are especially frail
and powerless are seen as if they are women, just as gay men
sometimes are treated contemptuously as if they are women.
But the world is run by old white men. The experiences are
incredibly different. Here’s an example. When newspaper
publisher Katherine Graham died, Michael Bechloss, a liberal
historian in his 50s, was speaking of his experience with
her, and he literally said, “Everybody talks about her
as an 84-year-old woman. I did not see her as an 84-year-old
woman. She wasn’t ossified” (Bechloss 2001). That
says worlds about the differences between attitudes toward
old men and old women—who would say that if Daniel Schorr
(who’s 90) or Mike Wallace (in his 80s) or Dan Rather
died? And this is a liberal guy talking.

VBL:
The example that strikes me is the obituary of columnist
Ann Landers. You’ve noted that the story announcing
her death on NBC Nightly News
began, “A great-grandmother who . . .” (2002).
That had nothing to do with her accomplishments and would
never have been applied to a man. The media simply does not
point out that an accomplished old man is a grandfather, let
alone foreground his place in the family. Moreover, you’ve
pointed out that this is exactly the type of description applied
to younger women in the 1950s: “A mother of two,”
etc. And you believe that drawing this analogy with attitudes
toward younger women before the second wave can be an effective
classroom technique.

CR:
Yes, that’s a crucial piece of feminist theory.
Since the second-wave feminists began as young women, they
didn’t know old women existed, so that attitudes toward
old women now are exactly the same as the earlier attitudes
toward younger women. They’ve been frozen in time. It’s
an important piece of understanding, particularly to introduce
students to issues of ageism in Women’s Studies. Make
clear to them how feminism really made a difference in the
overt contempt for women that was mixed with an exaggerated,
false respect and protection, and how it’s the same
for old women today. If we just point out old women’s
issues, that’s a yawn for students. We have to connect
these issues to the ones that younger women faced, not so
long ago. Connect how younger women in the ‘50s were
patronized, seen as submissive and dependent, childlike, with
how old women are treated now. Young women who spoke up were
called “uppity,” and still now, old women who
speak up are called “feisty.” Younger women weren’t
seen as terribly bright, not anyone you’d want to have
a long conversation with, just as old women continue to be
viewed now. It used to be that a few younger women would be
complimented by being told, “Oh, you think just like
a man.” Well, the other day in Ben and Jerry’s,
I was told I couldn’t be a senior, because I was smiling;
seniors were always grumpy. This happens all the time. I’m
told, “I’d never guess you were 72,” and
that’s supposed to be the highest compliment you can
give someone.

In the classroom, the blatant contempt for old women needs
not to be danced around, but needs to be brought out with
outrage, to get it across that these are women. In fact, this
represents one-third to onehalf of our lives as women. In
the 1960s and 1970s, we deconstructed “woman”—we
need to help students deconstruct “old woman.”
Teachers need to use powerful presentation techniques, such
as a Vogue article I have entitled, “How Old Do You
Look?” (Green 2003) with an illustration of an old woman’s
hand made to look exactly like a chicken’s claw. And
that type of attitude is everywhere. We can do a scholarly
analysis of birthday cards—the cards that inform me
as an old woman just how disgusting and hideous I am. Then
I’m chastised that I don’t have a sense of humor
when I object, the same comments we used to hear about sexist
or racist jokes.

VBL:
You’ve mentioned magazines and birthday cards.
What other classroom resources or approaches do you recommend?

CR:
I’d be delighted to provide a PowerPoint presentation
for use in classrooms, because students need to be shocked,
because they start out thinking old women are just so boring.
They need to be slapped with it. Then link old women’s
issues, as we were saying, to the blatant sexism of the ‘50s
and ’60s, how these are identical, except that younger
women’s bodies generally weren’t seen as hideous.
Still, menstruation was seen as disgusting, for example. When
the class is dealing with body image issues, bringing up age
is natural, and the media offers plenty of negative images
of old women to analyze. But we need to make clear how it
starts younger, how society is making the 30-year-old terrified
of how she’s starting to look like me.

And finally—I’m leaning heavily on Barbara [Macdonald]
here—they need to see that there’s a false power
women gain by being young. What little power she gets—and
it’s a false one—she gets for every year that
she distances herself from me in age. The price is that every
succeeding year she loses power. The 30-year-old loses power
by not being 20, the 40- year-old by not being 30, and so
on. We can see it clearly in movies and TV—we already
know that the male actors age and continue to win roles and
build prestige and are coupled with young women, while the
female actors age and disappear after 30. The same system
that sees old women as hideous and boring starts to discard
women at earlier and earlier ages, at 30. There are ways to
make the issue of old women integral to any approach of feminism.

VBL: We know that you’re
hoping for more from academia, but what about the broader
feminist community? Several essays in Look
Me in the Eye rightly criticize the unconscious ageism
in the women’s movement. In her remembrance of Barbara
Macdonald, Lise Weil (2001) noted Macdonald’s justified
exasperation at the feminist community, having expected them
“at the very least to get it, if not to act on it”
(xv). Has anything happened in this area since Barbara Macdonald’s
last years?

CR: I have a funny take on
that. I’m not sure I’ve seen a women’s movement
in recent years that is even comparable to the one Barbara
and I were living and working in. That movement wasn’t
just another special interest group; it was a movement to
transform society. Unfortunately, now, the movement to transform
society is coming from the other direction. I don’t
think we currently have the theory or the passionate activism
of the late ’60s and ’70s. We no longer have women’s
presses and bookstores and venues that provide a natural setting
to develop cutting-edge theory. We used to have lots of these
places, and now we have fewer. So if Women’s Studies
doesn’t address ageism, I don’t know who would.
Women’s Studies is embattled, but you’re all we’ve
got.

VBL: You noted in the latest
edition of Look Me in the Eye
that you were aware of now being older than Barbara was when
she wrote the essay, “Look Me in the Eye.” While
reading this edition, I was aware that many of the essays
are now at least twenty years old, so that you now are about
the age Barbara Macdonald was when you assembled the first
edition. How does this perspective affect your reaction to
your own aging?

CR: I am just so grateful to
have had that opportunity to observe ageism and analyze it
with Barbara over twenty years, so that now when I encounter
it directly, it’s still painful, but it’s not
as bad. At least I have what so many old women don’t
have, and that’s an analysis of the truly bizarre things
that people say and do. I ran into a young man in his 30s;
we had been activists together, and after we had brought each
other up to date about our political work, he said goodbye
and added, “I’m so glad you’re still up
and around!” I realized at that moment that he saw me
not as a political colleague, but as a wrinkled old woman
about to keel over. The constant message is that we are nothing
but our bodies, and our bodies are disgusting. Another example:
When I went to visit a younger friend in the hospital, another
woman in her 30s was there, talking about someone who was
about ten years younger than I. She said, “Well, she’s
somewhat elderly, but she’s nice.” I am standing
there with my white hair, and I’m invisible. It’s
amazing; the contempt for old women is so pervasive that nobody
really notices it. They think it’s natural. We have
to remember when contempt for people of color, contempt for
gays, felt just that natural. We’re still working to
combat that contempt in many corners, but we haven’t
even made a start with ageism. People don’t even know
it when they see it. For me personally, it’s not as
big a problem with people I know well, because we’ve
confronted it, but out in the world, it’s still unexamined.

VBL: I think the Journal’s
readers would be interested in learning more about your current
work with The Old Women’s Project. How was it conceived,
and how has it been received?

CR: The Old Women’s Project
began in 2001 as an idea cooked up around my kitchen table
by Mannie Garza, Janice Keaffaber, and me as a way to honor
Barbara, who had recently died. She was, after all, the first
to name ageism as a central feminist issue as opposed to a
problem of the elderly. She was the first to claim the word
“old” as a political act. And the project allowed
the three of us to confront the ageism we ourselves were encountering
in our 60s and 70s. We aren’t activists working specifically
on old women’s issues; Medicare and Social Security
are essential women’s issues, of course, but what I
want to do is to change attitudes, to get at the root of ageism.
We want to make visible the fact that old women are directly,
personally affected by all issues of social justice. Our first
action was to organize a large demonstration for low-cost
housing on International Women’s Day 2001. We brought
together all sorts of groups, showing that old women are at
one end of that issue of a lifetime of women’s unpaid
and low-paid work. That action and follow-up lobbying launched
the low-cost housing movement in San Diego. We work to foster
that spirit of connecting women, emphasizing actions that
show how old women are impacted by every kind of issue.

VBL: The photos of the giant
puppet you use in demonstrations are particularly impressive.

CR: The puppet is huge; it’s
a Kathe Kollwitz self-portrait. We chose her because she looks
multiethnic, and we gave her long, white, braided multiethnic
hair. She’s very popular wherever she goes and her name
is POWER, an acronym for Pissed Old Woman Engendering Revolution.
People also love the bright T-shirts we have saying, “Old
Women Are Your Future.” Women have shown us that they’re
hungry for all-women’s actions—I like to say,
“even though that’s so twentieth century.”
Our actions have brought together anywhere from 12 to 400
women—usually 50 to 100 at a time. We’re respected
in San Diego’s progressive community because we do a
lot of coalition work. It’s helpful that we make it
clear how old women are impacted by what we’re working
on in coalition. We’re not just do-gooders helping others;
we have a vested interest in the cause. We’re looking
to help progressive people see old women in a new light. We
definitely don’t call ourselves grannies. The grandma
thing does away with a sense of equality and reduces old women
to their roles within the family.

VBL: It seems to me that you’re
accomplishing a great deal through this coalition work. You
can show how women are connected regardless of age, how they’re
affected by the same issues at various ages; at the same time,
you’re able to reach and educate a population who may
ignore anything that is treated as only an old woman’s
issue.

CR: You put your finger on
the button. It just felt good to us.

VBL: And you’ve received
attention outside the San Diego area.

CR: When we put 400 women together to demonstrate with shopping
bags saying, “Women don’t buy this war,”
we heard from media across the country, including Oprah Winfrey.
We’ve heard from feminists, from feminist publications.
We hope it ripples out.

VBL: So you’d recommend
a similar approach for other activists?

CR: I’ve been an activist
for almost 50 years, and coalitions work. We focus on people
on the bottom—and that means we’re always working
with women—whether they’re low-wage home health
care workers and janitors or those in need of low-cost housing.
We show that these are old women’s issues. As we say,
“No living wage equals homeless old age.” It’s
essential that whatever group we identify with, we hold firm
to that identity, but we also must make connections to other
issues, not out of the goodness of our hearts, but because
the connections are real. For example, old women are affected
both by policies of the “war on drugs” and by
its results, which fill prisons instead of offering rehabilitation,
because guess who has to raise the children of parents who
are addicted or in prison? Old women. We hope other activists
will see more and more the importance of not being single-issue.
Single-issue politics are wrong for these times; these times
are much too serious for that.

VBL: Here in Florida, issues
involving old women may get more media attention than they
do in San Diego, just because of the older population here.
Nevertheless, the attitudes are disconcerting. Unless the
issue concerns the healthy, carefree, empty-nester who is
pictured on retirement brochures, the coverage is aimed at
a younger audience, asking what in the world we shall do about
this burden of old people, as if they are helpless and generally
worthless.

CR: If we’re to address
these social issues effectively, old women must be treated
as human beings, as equals. And once more, the situations
place women under intolerable stress, because the younger
women are expected to be caretakers. As Barbara foretold in
“Exploitation by Compassion” (Macdonald 1983),
the response to the challenges of increased longevity, maintaining
independence, and providing health care is, “Don’t
you have a daughter to take care of you?” (1983); Barbara
was analyzing that many years ago. No one’s dealing
with these social issues ahead of time, and it’s going
to get harder.

I want to add that what I’ve been talking about is
white mainstream society, in part because it would be arrogant
of me to speak about attitudes toward age in different ethnicities,
and because the issues are different in different communities.
But I address white dominant society first and foremost because
these ageist attitudes have a huge impact on women of color.
I’ll quote Harriet Jackson-Lyons, an old African-American
woman who has been organizing to get women who are raising
their grandchildren the same rights and income that foster
parents receive. This powerful woman talks about her experience
organizing: “Ageism has been one of our biggest obstacles
with politicians and agencies, convincing them that we do
not want cookies, boat rides, trips to the mall. Being old
does not mean that we cannot think. We are being respected
more and more. Now they don’t call me ‘dearie’
anymore” (Boston Women’s Fund 2001, 9). I think
that’s a really valuable quotation. Otherwise, I think
ageism can be seen as a bourgeois, frivolous, white women’s
issue, when it really cuts across all ethnicities and classes.
Our saying used to be, “All issues are women’s
issues,” and it’s also true that all issues are
old women’s issues.

Cynthia Rich
can be contacted through The Old Women’s Project website,
www.oldwomensproject.org, via e-mail at info@oldwomensproject.org.
The latest edition of Look Me in the Eye is available through
Bella Books, Tallahassee, FL, at www.bellabooks.com, or call
1-800-729-4992.

Valerie Barnes
Lipscomb earned a Ph.D in English from the University
of South Florida, where she teaches literature and composition.
Her publications examine age and performativity in modern
drama. Send correspondence to vklipscomb@juno.com.

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